


Take a minute

by Gumnut



Category: Thunderbirds
Genre: Atmospheric, Desert, Gen, Thunderbird Two, australian outback, sensory exercise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-20
Updated: 2020-10-20
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:35:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27122593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gumnut/pseuds/Gumnut
Summary: A mechanical fault forces Virgil to take a minute in the middle of the Australian Outback.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 24





	Take a minute

The hatch creaked as the hydraulics let it down to the dry hard packed dirt. A small puff of dust billowed up around the hot cahelium and it caught in his nose, tickling in the heat.

The horizon was flat and the earth iron red as it disappeared into the ominous grey of the cloud blocking the sky.

Virgil’s boots made their own puffs of dust as he stepped off the hatch and emerged from under the shadow of Two. The puffs followed him as he walked the length of his ‘bird. The dirt gritted under his specialised soles as he avoided the heat of her cooling VTOL and the scorch of her now quiet thrusters.

His landing was precautionary. A warning light had come on during the flight home and dumping himself in the middle of the Outback for a mechanical check was preferable to taking a swan dive in the middle of the Tasman.

Outside appearances gave no clue to the issue and unfortunately, he would have to wait for her engines to cool off before attempting to access the thruster that was the problem.

A sigh and he turned back to look at the horizon.

He truly was in the middle of nowhere.

“Thunderbird Two, status report.”

Typical Scott. His brother was hip deep in a rescue on the other side of the planet, but his brother radar still managed the range.

“Status a-okay, Thunderbird One. Just taking a moment to gaze at the scenery.”

“John says you have a mechanical fault.”

“Quite possibly. Fine for the moment. Just need a little cooling time. I’ll keep you updated.”

“FAB, Thunderbird Two.”

And then it was back to the silence.

True silence.

There was no wind.

No water.

No birds.

Just the heat of a dying day leaching out of the sand, the creak of his cooling ‘bird, and the potential energy in the air.

It was going to rain.

The Kansas farm boy could tell that much. Even in another country and an entirely different environment, he could feel it.

He didn’t need fancy instrumentation to predict that.

The impending storm raised the hair on his arms under his uniform. It itched at his skin and spoke of change.

Ants crawled across his boots, winged queens and drones launching to join a cloud of them off to his right.

It was eerie.

He shifted where he stood, unsure of what to do next. He wasn’t one for killing time. Time was a valuable thing and needed to be used to its upmost. But this stop was unplanned and there was little he could do while waiting.

Sure, there were tasks. There were always tasks, nitty gritty maintenance jobs. He was never short of work.

But the air was still. The sense of building atmospheric release buzzed across his senses.

It was tantalising.

He shivered.

There were still a couple of hours before sunset, but the air was dark due to the heavy cloudbank looming over the landscape.

A thought.

A flash of guilt followed by stubborn determination.

He turned and climbed back on to the hatch and retracted it, only to lower it again a few moments later with a folded chair and a box in his hands.

He parked it in the sand.

The silence was a physical presence.

He opened the box to reveal a portable watercolour kit – a neat palette of half pans, a fine brush and a small block of high-quality paper.

It was an indulgence he kept aboard his ‘bird. One he had yet to use, so this was definitely an opportune moment. A tiny amount of time to throw down some colour and capture this red-on-blue-grey intensity.

It didn’t take him long to realise he had forgotten a couple of things. A muttering step back into his ‘bird and he returned with a small table and a cup full of water.

He finally managed to settle himself. Painting while wearing his uniform wasn’t the most comfortable. It was bulky and in the way. He did shed his gloves, which meant he had to take off his wrist controller. Scott would frown enough to dent his nose, but he couldn’t paint with his gloves on.

There was heavy lifting, but there was also sensitive and tactile manipulation. He liked to think he was capable of both.

A dip of his brush into clear water, a dab of cadmium red, and colour spilled onto the paper.

Payne’s grey filled the sky in soft billows with just a hint of ultramarine. He tried to keep his touch gentle. Watercolour was so unforgiving. Fast and delicate, the colours could easily be overdone and unlike acrylic or oils, could not be undone satisfactorily.

It took all his concentration to sketch out the worn landscape.

The parched air dried the colours quickly and it wasn’t long before he was flicking strands of yellow ochre spinifex in the foreground, the little painting almost done.

In the distance, the clouds rumbled warning.

He dabbed in a second layer to bring up the contrast, the greys echoing the thunder on the horizon. Just a touch of green brought out the red of the iron in the sand.

“I really don’t know how you do that.”

Virgil nearly fell out of his chair.

“Scott!” His heart thudded in his ears and he clutched the drying painting in his hands as it tried to slip from his fingers. “What the hell?! How did you…?” He shot to his feet and turned to find his brother standing behind him. Beyond, at a respectable distance, sat Thunderbird One.

Scott held up both hands, taking a step back. “Hey, I saw you were painting, so I parked back a ways. Figured you wouldn’t want VTOL messing with your paints.” But then his brother was smothering a grin. “You were kinda zoned out there, Virg.”

“You were in Prague! How did you get here so fast?” It was a stupid question. He was Scott Tracy. Fast was part of his genome.

But his brother frowned. “It’s been over an hour since I last contacted you. The situation is resolved. I was on my way back and thought I’d check in. John said he hadn’t had an update.”

Virgil stared at his brother. An hour? He brought his wrist up to check the time, but his controller was on the little table beside his chair with his discarded gloves.

Oh.

Scott arched an eyebrow at him.

Virgil grunted before putting the painting down carefully and retrieving his equipment. A moment later, his gloves were on and his wrist controller back in place.

It was indeed over an hour later.

Thunderbird Two would have cooled down enough forty-odd minutes ago.

“You were lost in your painting, weren’t you.” It wasn’t a question. His brother sighed, walked over to the table and picked up the piece of art. Blue eyes scrutinised it. “Nope. I don’t have a clue how you do that. It’s great, Virg.” He handed it over and somewhat numbly, Virgil took it.

He stared at the strokes in which he had been so absorbed earlier. The landscape stretched into the paper, reds bouncing off blues, the stillness captured in pigments.

Okay, so he had to admit, it was working quite well. He had muddied the colour a little in one corner and there was a patch where he’d left more white paper than was probably necessary because he was too worried about over doing the paint, but overall it mostly did what he wanted it to do. Oh, his wash hadn’t quite worked in that bit. Damn.

But…

He could get away with it.

“Earth to Virgil? You okay in there?”

Scott was smirking.

Virgil glared at him before cradling the watercolour block in one hand, picking up the palette with the other and packing it away. He stomped his way back to his ‘bird.

He ignored the laugh behind him.

He was stashing the paints in their locker when Scott joined him in Two, both the table and chair folded up in his hands. “Where do you stash these?”

Virgil gestured in the direction of the utility store and his brother put the equipment away.

Back in the cockpit, Virgil pulled up the suspect control and found the red light still glaring accusingly as Scott entered behind him.

“Give me ten. I need to inspect her starboard thruster.” He grabbed a safety line and threw back the overhead hatch. The gloomy atmosphere crept into the cockpit, but he ignored it and elevated the himself up so he could climb onto the top of his ‘bird.

“Virgil, you do know there is a storm coming in. You’re standing on the highest point for miles.”

“I’ll only be a minute.” Keep your pants on.

But his brother was right. His dawdling with his paints had cost him time and the weather was moving in.

He hurried across the back of his Thunderbird sliding carefully onto her starboard intake, and making his way down to the access hatch. He hooked in his safety line, prodded his controller to release the security, and hauled the hatch open.

Five minutes later, with several profane words that had Scott even more concerned, he yanked an obstruction out of her secondary intake valve.

It was a bright yellow, now somewhat grimy, Thunderbird Four.

No more than four inches long.

“I’m going to kill him.”

“Virg? What? Who?”

“Gordon.” He didn’t elaborate. The sky was well and truly rumbling now and he needed to get inside.

Tightening the valve, he gave it a good once over to check for damage. Another poke at his controller and the dash confirmed the issue resolved.

Access secured, he unhooked his line and made a run for the main hatch just as the landscape lit up white with lightning.

He leapt into his ‘bird as if he had that lightning on his tail.

His boots hit deck plates. Virgil reached up and threw the hatch closed and sealed away the angry sky.

Scott was staring at him.

Virgil met that gaze before walking past his brother towards his pilot seat. He casually chucked the little Thunderbird Four to his brother like the grenade it was.

Scott caught it. “What the hell?”

Gordon was dead twice over and he didn’t even know it.

“You better get back to your ‘bird. The sky’s going to open up any minute and we should probably be above it rather than below it.” Virgil poked at the weather read out. It was only a weather front, nothing compared to the cyclone forces the Thunderbirds were capable of tackling. “You might get wet.”

Scott was still glaring at the model in his hand. A distracted grunt.

Gordon was definitely dead.

Possibly more than twice.

“Okay, less imaginary brother murders and more getting back to your ‘bird.”

“Huh?”

Yeah, so now who was zoning out?

Virgil nudged his brother onto the hatch platform and stepped on himself, lowering it onto the red dust again.

He stepped off the deck plates just as the first fat rain drops started to hit the dust.

Damn. “Too late.” And as if he had given the sky permission, it really opened up.

Water hit dry earth in big splats, puffs of red rose only to be taken down by more rain. The stipple of water fast became patches and then the land deepened in colour. The bright iron red darkened almost to a burgundy. The spinifex he had so finely painted not half an hour earlier, shifted from a yellow ochre to a gold that almost glowed in the remnant light.

As Scott stepped up beside him, secure under the protection of Two’s nose, the landscape bleached suddenly and the sky grumbled and cracked. The air smelt of ozone and the sharp evaporation of precipitation in the heat. But there was more water than the air or the earth could take and it puddled in the indents between the rocks.

Some kind of thorny lizard darted out from a tuft of spinifex and hurried under the shelter of Two beside the brothers. At the lack of the rain on its back, it looked up as if surprised. Two reptilian eyes stared at them before darting back out into the rain.

Scott took another step forward and Virgil put a hand on his arm.

“You’re not going to try to run through that.”

“I’ve got to get back to One.”

“Why?”

“Because…” His brother trailed off.

Virgil squeezed his arm gently. “Take a minute. This is a desert storm. It will be short lived. We can wait.”

Blue eyes stared at him.

Okay, so waiting wasn’t part of Scott Tracy’s genome.

“Take a minute. Watch.” Virgil turned back to the storm and revelled in the release of the tension that had been building for the last couple of hours. He watched the rain hit the earth, the patterns, the dance of spinifex leaves. He listened to the roar, the wet splat against cahelium, the sigh as the water disappeared into the grass and the grumbles in the clouds.

Scott eventually turned to look and, for a short while there, they were just a couple of brothers staring out at the storm.

The fact they were sheltering underneath one of the most advanced technological creations on the planet was unimportant.

“This is all your fault, you know.” Scott’s voice was soft.

A grunt. “I think Gordon’s is the more likely culprit.”

“If you hadn’t stopped to paint, we’d be home by now.”

Virgil didn’t answer immediately. He took a breath. “But then we would have missed this.”

At that moment the sun finally hit the horizon and slipped through a gap in the clouds to light up the wet landscape in gold. Rain still fell, but it was as if it was liquid sunlight failing from the sky. Water glistened on everything and the clouds lit up from underneath.

Thunder rumbled in clouds turning pink in the east.

“Yeah, we would.” But the acknowledgement was distracted as Scott stared at the spectacle.

Perhaps they had something for which to thank Gordon. It was a moment that they would never have experienced if Virgil hadn’t had to stop.

He breathed in the freshened air and let it out with a relaxing sigh.

No.

Gordon was still dead.

-o-o-o-

FIN.


End file.
